How accurate are the difficulty descriptions? The descriptions in-game make it sound like "casual" is easy and "hardcore" is for people who have played a few shooters, but I played the training on "hardcore" and died a bunch of times. Is it just a matter of getting comfortable with the cover system, or is "hardcore" actually hard?

I played through on casual first and it was pretty easy. The amount of damage the bad guys take on hardcore is alot....I mean a whole clip per target. I would suggest play through act 1 on casual to get familiar with the game and where the bad guys come from and then make a decision on the difficulty.

But even then, it was still a chore. Even worse, enemies had no reaction to taking fire so it felt like you were doing no damage to them at all.

I'd actually recommend you play through on casual. Hardcore just wasn't fun even though casual was a little easy. I just didn't like the disparity between body and headshot damage and how much damage the player took in that mode. Even in casual, there'll be difficult spots, but play it in hardcore and you'll encounter a lot of frustrating moments.

Thankfully in gears two I think they said there's 4 difficulty settings, or at least they've refined the current settings.

Well, casual makes the final boss tolerable. On hardcore I simply could not get past him, even after multiple attempts. I would have been really upset if I played through an entire game, and couldn't actually finish it.

Isn't there some sort of Insane mode that gets unlocked if you've finished Hardcore?

Yes, and they mean it. How does insta-death from enemy melee attacks sound to you?

I co-op played through to Act 4 on it with Fyedaddy, and two things finally wore me out on it:1) For some reason I wasn't credited with the achievement for completing act 3 on Insane when we finished it (he at least got the achievement, but still, that sucked for me)2) The melee insta-death just did it in for me. It'd be one thing if it worked both ways (if I could do the same to them), making melee a risky but potentially rewarding proposition, but instead it's just ridiculous handicapping for the AI.

I love the game, but at this point I'd rather replay it on hardcore than play more Insane.

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I co-op played through to Act 4 on it with Fyedaddy, and two things finally wore me out on it:1) For some reason I wasn't credited with the achievement for completing act 3 on Insane when we finished it (he at least got the achievement, but still, that sucked for me)

You only get those achievements if you're playing as Marcus. The achievements you would get at that time were the Dom achievements, Dom-curious and Domination.

I co-op played through to Act 4 on it with Fyedaddy, and two things finally wore me out on it:1) For some reason I wasn't credited with the achievement for completing act 3 on Insane when we finished it (he at least got the achievement, but still, that sucked for me)

You only get those achievements if you're playing as Marcus. The achievements you would get at that time were the Dom achievements, Dom-curious and Domination.

Then how did I get the achievements for Insane completion on Act 1 & Act 2 playing as Dom, eh? Methinks you may be mistaken.

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I co-op played through to Act 4 on it with Fyedaddy, and two things finally wore me out on it:1) For some reason I wasn't credited with the achievement for completing act 3 on Insane when we finished it (he at least got the achievement, but still, that sucked for me)

You only get those achievements if you're playing as Marcus. The achievements you would get at that time were the Dom achievements, Dom-curious and Domination.

Then how did I get the achievements for Insane completion on Act 1 & Act 2 playing as Dom, eh? Methinks you may be mistaken.

I co-op played through to Act 4 on it with Fyedaddy, and two things finally wore me out on it:1) For some reason I wasn't credited with the achievement for completing act 3 on Insane when we finished it (he at least got the achievement, but still, that sucked for me)

You only get those achievements if you're playing as Marcus. The achievements you would get at that time were the Dom achievements, Dom-curious and Domination.

Then how did I get the achievements for Insane completion on Act 1 & Act 2 playing as Dom, eh? Methinks you may be mistaken.

Strange...I got no such achievements while playing as Dom.

I'm pretty sure you can as Dom. It's possible that you missed a chapter somewhere along the way...?

Long ago I struggled through the first two or three acts on Hardcore but eventually lost interest and moved on to the new hotness. Recently I got back into the SP campaign as I'd like to finish it before the release of Gears of War 2, and after about 15 minutes of ridiculous frustration on Hardcore I started over on Casual and the game has been much more fun. Yes, it is a little easier, but not so much as to make the game boring. Hardcore ramps up the difficulty a little too much, and playing felt too much like a chore.

Even though Casual feels a little easier than I might prefer, it is far more fun than Hardcore, and I'm finally enjoying the game rather than struggling through as some sort of exercise in frustration.

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Beauty is only skin deep. Which is why I take very good care of my skin.

Ninja Gaiden on the X-Box taught me that I'd rather a game be slightly easy than frustratingly hard. Gears' Hardcore difficulty was, most of the time, just right, so I enjoyed it. Which surprised me, since most shooters I have to play on a slightly easier setting since I suck at that. I played it co-op though, so that probably factored into the effective difficulty of the game.

Ninja Gaiden 2, on a sidenote, having easier difficulties sounds like it'll be far more enjoyable.

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Long ago I struggled through the first two or three acts on Hardcore but eventually lost interest and moved on to the new hotness. Recently I got back into the SP campaign as I'd like to finish it before the release of Gears of War 2, and after about 15 minutes of ridiculous frustration on Hardcore I started over on Casual and the game has been much more fun. Yes, it is a little easier, but not so much as to make the game boring. Hardcore ramps up the difficulty a little too much, and playing felt too much like a chore.

Even though Casual feels a little easier than I might prefer, it is far more fun than Hardcore, and I'm finally enjoying the game rather than struggling through as some sort of exercise in frustration.

I played the game through the first time on Casual and enjoyed it tremendously. I then played it through on Hardcore, and it was great until General Raam. I quit playing after trying that out 100 times, give or take a few.

Just last night, I completed the game on Insane. Had to bring in a friend on RAAM. Took us about 20 attempts. We hadn't played in a couple months so I take mulligans on my first 5-10 attempts just getting used to the controls again.

Just a little followup on this. After finishing the game on Casual, I have slowly been completing it on Hardcore. I played the first act on Hardcore after finishing it on Casual, then wanted to get the first Dom achievement, so joined someone playing on Hardcore. Turned out they were at the end of the game, so I got RAAM out of the way on co-op. Went back this weekend to finish up acts 2-4 on Hardcore. It was challenging, but not un-fun, barring some places where I expected a struggle, like the final mansion fight.

After I finished up the Hardcore achievements, I figured I would try out Insane. I have to tip my hat to anyone who has completed the game on this level. On the second chapter it already felt harder than the hardest levels on Hardcore. I think I'd have as much fun trying Insane as playing COD on Veteran - no fun at all. You people have some real patience to work through that.